Home

“Then my people will live in a peaceful habitation, And in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places; “  Isaiah 32:18

I wake up thinking about how God gives us what we need when we need it.  He fulfills our needs much more often  than we see.  It’s easier to see looking back over our lives or from the outside looking at a friend’s life.   I am still reading Ann Voskamp’s book one thousand gifts.  This morning I think about how God blessed her (who lost a toddler sister and whose family of origin was grieving and empty and without God for many years) with a solid family of her own, a family full of love and Christ centeredness.  And also how he has blessed her, who suffers from agoraphobia (anxiety disorder in which one fear  places one can’t escape), by giving her a wide open farm where she can live and raise her family.  I wake up marveling at the gift of her seeing how much He loves her now, and has always loved her, and wants to make her whole and bring her home – to Him and life with Him.

This leads me to look back at my own life and see the miracle blessings of a God who is always healing.  My parents divorced and remarried 2 years later.  The divorce shattered me, and yet my parents REMARRIED – that doesn’t happen very often. The idea of home, of having a place to feel safe and have refuge from this crazy world, is important to most children. Divorce can take that away.

The shattered part of me was always looking for a solid structure in which I could find refuge.  I didn’t know God so I looked for a physical home.  The house that I and multiple generations of my family grew up in is pictured above and still feels like home to me, although it is no longer owned by anyone in my family.  When I see the house I feel that warm, cozy, settled feeling of home.  So when we decided to build  a house for our young family, guess what I wanted it to look like?   While building my dream house I was very aware of being given a huge gift.  I was being given the very thing that I had longed for – a cozy, warm, beautiful place to raise my kids.  For once, I was very thankful.

But something interesting happened after we lived in the house a few years.  I began to realize that a house is just a house.  Even if it’s beautiful and just the thing you think you want, it can’t fulfill the deeper yearning that we all have – for God and His love.  So today I am thankful for the understanding that home is when I am with God, and that is where I want my heart to be.  And getting my heart on the path to God is through thankfulness – at all times.  Naming and describing the things I am thankful for, as Ann Voskamp does in her book, is the first  step that puts me on the thankful path.